Credit: The Associated Press

In this Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013 photo, a Free Syrian Army fighter aims his weapon towards government forces during clashes in Telata village, a frontline located at the top of a mountain in the Idlib, a northwest province countryside of Syria.

BEIRUT — Wading into the world spotlight, international inspectors arrived in Damascus on Tuesday to begin the monumental task of overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons in the middle of a civil war.

The inspectors from a Netherlands-based chemical weapons watchdog have around nine months to complete their mission that calls for finding, dismantling and eliminating President Bashar Assad's estimated 1,000-ton arsenal.